Marva Collins
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Marva N. Collins, born in Monroeville, Alabama is an educator who in 1975 started Westside Preparatory School in Garfield Park, an impoverished neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. She is famous for applying classical education successfully with impoverished students, many of whom had been labelled as 'learning-disabled' by public schools. She has written a number of manuals, books and motivational tracts describing her history and methods, and currently (2006) has a web site and public speaking service. She was most widely publicized in the 1981 biographical TV movie The Marva Collins Story starring Cicely Tyson and Morgan Freeman.
She graduated from Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia known today as Clark Atlanta University, and then taught school for two years in Alabama, then moved to Chicago, where she taught in public schools for fourteen years. In 1975 she started Westside Preparatory, which became an educational and commercial success. In 1996 she began supervising three Chicago public schools that had been placed on probation. In 2004 she received a National Humanities Medal, among many awards for her teaching and efforts at school reform.
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[edit] Method
Marva Collins uses the Socratic method, modified for use in primary school. The first step is to select material with abstract content to challenge students' logic, and that will therefore have different meaning to different students, in order to aid discussion. This is done specifically to teach children to reason.
Next, the teacher should read the material, because unknown material cannot be taught. New words, the words to watch, should be listed, and taught, for pronunciation, use and spelling before the material is read. Without this step, the reading is meaningless.
Next, one begins a series of pertinent questions as the reading progresses, starting with a reference to the title, and a question about what the material is about. Predictions should use logic, reasoning and evidence without fallacy. The reading must be out loud, so the teacher can ask questions at pertinent points. Students are taught to test their reasoning. Afterward, they write daily letters to the author or characters, and write a critical review. Why is the work important to them? The child must be taught to refer to what was previously learned to support their opinions.
In the Socratic method, the rate of information is controlled by the teacher. Properly paced, this encourages participation, reducing discipline issues and encouraging self-discipline. The program specifically avoids work-sheets and inane busy work. It establishes an intellectual atmosphere, a general attitude suspending judgement, and examining reasoning.
[edit] Quotes
- "There is a brilliant child locked inside every student."
- "Don't try to fix the students, fix ourselves first. The good teacher makes the poor student good and the good student superior. When our students fail, we, as teachers, too, have failed."
- "The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another."
- "Once teachers try the Socratic, or direct method of teaching, they will never return to anything that cannot produce the 'magic.'"
- "Success doesn't come to you... you go to it."
- "Excellence is not an act but a habit. The things you do the most are the things you will do best."
- "Trust yourself. Think for yourself. Act for yourself. Speak for yourself. Be yourself. Imitation is suicide."
- "Determination and perseverance move the world; thinking that others will do it for you is a sure way to fail."
- "Character is what you know you are, not what others think you have."
[edit] References
- Marva Collins' Way, by Marva Collins with Civia Tamarkin
- The Marva Collins method; a manual for educating and motivating your child by Marva Collins
- Ordinary Children, Extraordinary Teachers, by Marva Collins
- Values: Lighting The Candle of Excellence: A Practical Guide, by Marva Collins
- A conversation with Marva Collins: A Different School by Marva Collins
- Grandma, What Is Learning? by Marva Collins
- Redeeming Education by Marva Collins
- The School that Cared: A Story of the Marva Collins Preparatory School of Cincinnati, by P. Kamara Sekou Collins
